Artists

Project Description

Eric Orr

Eric Orr, along with Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Doug Wheeler, and James Turrell, pioneered the Light and Space movement in the late 1960s and ‘70s, a genre primarily concerned with perceptual experience stemming from the viewer’s interaction with the work. Orr worked in installation, performance, sculpture, and painting throughout his career. In his paintings the artist enjoyed using elemental qualities of natural materials, such as stone, metal, water, fire, gold leaf, dry ice, dust, blood, and lead. This work The Other Side of Red #5 belongs to a group of paintings called “Time Windows” completed during the 1980s and ’90s. “Time Windows” contain glowing electric blue or bright red rectangles with soft halation or auras along the edges. Squares or rectangles visually float within them, reminders of the portals of his early installation works. His paintings blur space via complex relationships of color and gesture, and much like his light and space installations allow for a perceptual experience for each individual viewer.

Eric Orr’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Berkeley Museum of Art, Berkeley, CA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Frederick R Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; The Norton Collection, Santa Monica, CA; San Francisco Museum of Art; Chemical Bank, New York, NY; The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA; The Robert Rowen Collection, Pasadena, CA; Mitsui Fudosan Collection, Tokyo, Japan; as well as many others.

Huffington Post: Crazy WisdomIn the 30 years following Light and Space artist Eric Orr’s death, his children have positively thrived. His daughter Elizabeth Orr (an artist and video editor) is now reviving a Guy de Cointet play that her father worked on 30 years ago. John Speed Orr is a gifted ballet soloist whose recent collaborative performance projects have also brought him closer to his father’s legacy.